BENEATH TROPIC SEAS 



arm reduced to a wrist-like proportion. "And so, 

 Best Beloved," we now know why an albatross 

 can not hover, or a hummingbird soar. 



The sight of the bare angular little arm reminds 

 us that the hummingbird, although insective in 

 size, is wholly bird. Even Everyman's eyes can 

 detect the three remaining fingers, and a reading 

 glass will probably show a claw. Indeed, if I 

 were to select the type of life which, in character, 

 most resembles these birds, I should choose the 

 small, green lizards of the south. Their bright 

 eyes, their fearlessness and the inconceivable speed 

 they can attain are all hummingbird-like. This 

 is not wholly fanciful, for the "spider-like legges" 

 of the diminutive birds are clad in scales, per- 

 sistent memories through all ages of some lizardy 

 ancestor. 



Due principally to their speed and small size, 

 hummingbirds live in a world apart, a lilliputian 

 dimension of their own. The garden ruby-throat 

 hovers before us, a very definite bird within reach 

 — an instant later he has vanished into thin air. 

 But there is a way of outwitting him, an art which 

 cuts straight through his defenses and brings him 

 and all his life under observation. We look for 

 the first of his kind in New York latitudes in early 

 May, but long before this we must prepare the 

 snares, the traps of sight and odor, which will tempt 

 him from his path. Plant and plant and plant his 

 favorite flowers; bee-balm, petunias, bouncing-bet, 

 trumpet-vine, nasturtiums, sweet peas, honey- 



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